The Duran Podcast - Russian promise, Pentagon worries

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

Russian promise, Pentagon worries

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the Russian warning to the U.S. ambassador in Russia, where Russia said that they will retaliate to the attacks on the Crimea beach. And this was a warning issued by the Russian foreign ministry. after this warning, we actually had a telephone call between Austin and Belusuf as well, though the readout doesn't tell us too much, but this was a call initiated by the United States, by the Pentagon. And according to the readout, the Pentagon, Austin, told the Russian defense minister that the U.S. and Russia, they need to keep the lines of communication open.

So an interesting development after the warning from Russia to the U.S. ambassador in Moscow. What are your thoughts on what is going on here? You're the first person that I know of who's connected those two events, even though they are obviously connected to each other. Now, the first thing to understand is this. Firstly, we had an attack, a missile attack on Crimea using At-Ackham's missiles. Now, it is generally acknowledged. I had a discussion. It's an open discussion. It was on his channel with Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, who's much more familiar with this kind of technology than I am.

He says unequivocally that it is orbiting conceivable that the Ukrainians could operate such a sophisticated and complicated system by themselves, and they would certainly need targeting data from the United States to carry out an operation like this. Now, so to use a weapon system like that. So we have an attack missile. Clearly, all the indications are operated with the assistance of the United States, launched at a target in Crimea, possibly the Belbeck Air Base, who knows. But anyway, passing over a beach in Crimea, exploding in mid-air, dropping canisters, you know, cluster munitions onto this beach. Large numbers of people were injured. Certain number of people were killed, including children, apparently.

The Russians, as we discussed in a previous programme, absolutely furious about this. And they are openly blaming the United States. They're saying the Americans were responsible. And the Russians then summoned the US ambassador for a meeting in the foreign ministry. Now, this was a very, very strong meeting indeed, because the Russians not only said to the US ambassador that this attack can only have happened with the involvement of the United States, but they say that it was an intentional attack directed at civilians, which in effect accuses the United States of complicity in a war crime. And then they say to the US ambassador that retaliation will follow.

In other words, that the Russians are going to retaliate against the United States itself. That's the intention. Now, this is something that the Russians say might happen. It is a warning, but it's an warning to the Americans of a forthcoming event. There will be Russian retaliation against the United States in some form over the next indefinite period of time. We don't know when. And directly after that call, the United States, obviously alarm. by this warning from the Russians, gets its defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, to telephone

Andre Belloosov, the Russian defense minister. And we get a deeply uninformative readout from both countries telling us that, you know, they discussed the situation in Ukraine and confirmed their willingness to maintain contact, their need to maintain contact, on the face of it, it looks like it was a conciliatory call that the United States was trying to reassure the Russians, both of its non-involvement in this affair, and of its anxiety to de-escalate the situation. That looks like what the Pentagon might have been doing. But of course, we don't know that for a fact. For all I know, the meeting might have been the discussion, might have been an awful lot more heated, and it's not impossible that Lloyd Austin, in turn, warned Bel Ousuf,

that if the Russians do retaliate against the United States, as the Russians now say they will, then the Americans will respond further themselves. So we don't know exactly what took place over the course of this call. But clearly, the fact that this call took place at all shows that the Americans are taking this warning extremely seriously and that it's made them nervous and that they are in fact responding to this warning from the Russians by wheeling out Royd Austin either to make threats or perhaps more plausibly given the tone of the readouts to try to de-escalate the situation and perhaps to reassure the Russians that nothing like this will happen again. Right. You said in your video update that the missile may have been

targeting this air base, but it also may have been directed at the main Orthodox cathedral. Yeah. Do you have any update on that information? No, I know. It does coincide with the Orthodox holiday that was taking place at the time of the attack oms. And you did also have the terrorist attack in Dagestan, which was also targeting Orthodox churches. Yes. Any update there?

Now, that report was appearing in the Russian media, but can I just say something else? What we do now learn is that if this attack of his missile really was launched towards Belbeck, the airbase, then the direction it took is a strange one. I mean, this is a ballistic missile. Apparently, it is not particularly maneuverable. I mean, it's not like the Ascandar M, which can engage in all kinds of complicated maneuvers as it approaches a target, which makes it all but impossible to shoot down. It's a sort of straight-line missile. And if you look at Russian position, rather Ukrainian positions, launch sites, you would not expect an attack of a missile to be heading over this beach.

Now, it could be that someone in Moscow has, or not just in Moscow, but that the Russians have plotted the course of this missile and have felt that it was clearly moving towards Sevastopol as opposed to Belbeck, which is some, you know, in a different direction. And that this explains why this missile was where it was, rather than, as I said, in a completely different location. But these were reports that were appearing in Russia. I can't confirm them. What I will say is this. They quietly faded away. it could be that a decision was made from someone in Moscow that the situation has become dangerous enough already without stories like that circulating. If it was an attack, an aimed attack at the cathedral,

well, to be frank, that would be a monstrous thing. This is an enormously important Orthodox holiday. It's the sequel to Easter. In the West, it's known as the Feast of Pentecost, just saying, to those who don't know what this holiday is. It's not particularly celebrated in the Western world, except in Germany, by the way, I understand, but it is taken very seriously indeed in Greece and in the Orthodox world. Right. Okay, so the the phone call between Austin and Bolusuf, the fact that we don't have an extensive readout,

does that signal to you that this was a warning or some sort of de-escalation? I mean, usually when you don't have an extensive readout, what is that signal? I think it signals that the Americans were being as conciliatory as they possibly could and wanted to de-escalate. If it was a warning, the United States would boast about it, in other words. Would boast about it, exactly. If they want to de-escalate, they don't want to broadcast the fact of the world and all to the usual collection of hardliners, Lindsay Graham, Tim Cotton and all that bunch.

So that, it seems to me, is a much more plausible explanation of what happened. But of course, you know, I don't know. And the other thing is, Lloyd Austin, obviously, would have acted after discussions with the White House, with Jake Sullivan and with the president, presumably. I say presumably, because we don't know how far involved the president is in these discussions anymore. But presumably, there were top-level discussions in Washington. And notice that the decision to have this call took place very fast. but of course the United States government as we know is a deeply factionalized entity

and there will be all sorts of people who take completely different views if this was a conciliatory call we can be sure that there are some people who would have been furious about it and who would have responded very aggressively and we said well look it has never apologized for anything we do to the Russians, we should instead take the strongest possible line against them. And if they make threats like this, warnings like this to the United States, the only proper thing for us to do is to warn them even more strongly in response. So, you know, this might not be, if it was an attempt to de-escalate, it might not be the end of the matter, not by any means. Even if that

attempt to de-escalate was sincere, which perhaps it wasn't. Right. Yeah. Well, Biden right now is incognito preparing or being prepared for the debate, depending on how you want to look at it. But what do you think Jake Sullivan, who I consider to be the foreign policy president of the United States, what do you think he's so concerned about with this warning from Russia? What's concerning him? Well, I think that the Russians... What's freaking him out. What's freaking... I think that the Russians are keeping the Americans guessing

about what they're going to do. And I think that must be in itself alarming and they must be worrying what the Russians are planning. But if I have to say, where I think Jake Sullivan is most worried, it's about some major flare-up in the Middle East. The Middle East is barely under control. That's not under control at all.

There's fighting going on in all kinds of places. Gaza is still at war. despite the American attempts to, well, the American-backed ceasefire resolution that passed the Security Council, the Israelis are talking about an attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon. The US is saying they will back Israel in this. The Americans must be extremely worried that if the Russians start weighing in and start providing hypersonic technology to people like Hezbollah, and by the way to the Houthis as well, people like that, then, of course, situation could get even more out of control, and American lives would certainly be on the line because the United States has all sorts of bases strung out across the Middle East, and they could

easily find themselves attacked. And if they're attacked by militias who are obtaining intelligence, targeting data from the Russians who are using more advanced Russian weapons, well, the whole situation becomes very, very concerning for Jake Sullivan, especially given the mood in the United States, which is very divided over the situation in the Middle East. There's still a lot of Americans back Israel to the hilt, but there is now increasing opposition to US policy, supporting Israel in the United States itself. And the very last thing I would have thought is Jake Sullivan would want

is for that opposition in the United States, which comes from people who are overwhelmingly likely to vote Democrat, to be fanned even further by an even more intense flare-up in the Middle East. So I think that's probably what he's worried about, actually. Right. Something else happened after the telephone conversations between the warning from the Russian foreign ministry to the U.S. ambassador and then the telephone conversation between Bolus and

Austin. You had Peskov saying that the Russian president is still open to the negotiations and still open to a ceasefire given the statement that he made a couple of weeks ago, the terms that he laid out a couple of weeks ago. And then a couple of days later, the Kremlin repeated that statement. And you also had Macron talking about how he's open to dialogue with Putin as well. Maybe not given the terror attack on the Crimea beach, maybe not the best time for the Kremlin to say that they're open to negotiations. But it followed very closely to the terror incident.

The statement followed that. The statement came after that incident very, very quickly. And it makes me wonder, it seems that Putin is very serious about negotiations and a ceasefire. No. Yeah. I get it. I'm going to actually push back a bit. I think on the contrary, it makes complete sense, given Russian policy.

and given the direction of events that, you know, the way in which the diplomatic pieces have been falling in Russia's favour, that the Russians, at the very same time as that they're telling the Americans, look, we are going to retaliate against you. You'd be under no doubts about this, that the Russians would simultaneously be issuing statements, reassuring their own allies and the world that despite this escalation, they are still interested, they're still prepared to sit down and to negotiate. Because from a Russian point of view, they know perfectly well that if they seem to close off the option to negotiations entirely, that would be deeply concerning for all sorts of countries around the world. Brazil, which is staked a lot on getting negotiations going. India, who's

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is about to visit Moscow. China too, which has its own peace plan, all of these countries. So I think that the Russians want to reassure everybody that, in fact, look, we are absolutely furious about what happened. We are definitely going to retaliate against the Americans. But we are not so angry that we've, you know, lost, taken leave of our senses. we still are willing to find some kind of process whereby provided our call conditions are accepted, we can find a way out. The Americans don't want to negotiate. The Russians always say that they want to negotiate.

They've been saying this ever since the very first day that the special military operation began. They have never foreclosed the option on negotiations. and given how well it's worked for them, taking that stand, they're not going to foreclose it now. Right. Right. Okay. The Biden administration, according to CNN, they're also getting very close to green lighting contractors to go to Ukraine, U.S. contractors. The explanation is that these contractors are going to help repair and maintain equipment,

and they're going to be removed from, far removed from the front lines from where the actual fighting is taking place. What do you make of this decision from the Biden White House? Once again, all of this follows the sequence of events we've been talking about. So, I mean, I think all of this stuff is kind of connected in one way or another. What do you make of this CNN report? Well, again, if the United States has indeed. spoken to the Russians and said that they understand Russian concerns and they're going to try

and make sure that something like what happened in Crimea doesn't happen again and that the United States doesn't want an escalation and doesn't want things to become involved. Well, it will be again entirely in character for the Americans to announce some escalation elsewhere. And of course, the point to say about the, remember, remember, this is a very hard line, very aggressive, very belligerent administration. They're not going to take it. It's not going to be easy for them to make conciliatory sounds to the Russians. So this is an announcement that they've made that they're going to allow Black Rock and all the others to operate in Ukraine. Of course, the reality is they've been there all along. There's no shortage of foreign mercenaries and people of that kind, including, by the way,

American mercenaries fighting in Ukraine. There's lots of technology. There's lots of technology. people involved operating things in Ukraine. And of course, what this might in part be intended to do, it might be intended to formalize in some way the situation with systems like the attackers. We all know the Americans are involved in operating the attackers. The Russians have just told the Americans that they know that the Americans are operating. the attackers or helping to operate the attackers. More likely than not, these are people who have left the U.S. military in order that they can go to Ukraine as contractors. So you just now confirm the fact that they're there. So that's probably what this is all about. But it was the Russians will see it as another escalatory move, which in a sense it is. Yeah, I agree with you on that.

just a correction. I think you said black rock, black water. Black water, I'm so sorry. Black water. Black water. I always get those confused too. Completely different organization. Not so different. A complete slip at the time, I'm afraid. Yeah, that's so different. Yeah, I thought the same thing with that CNN article. I think on the one hand it it prepares the U.S. public for the fact that contractors will continue to appear in Ukraine,

but it also covers the Biden White House tracks in that if contractors are discovered to be in Ukraine from the past two years, well, it kind of covers the Biden White House's basis. Yeah. They were there, but we gave the decision, yeah. Yeah. All the more so, if they're going to be killed. And I mean, it's now a certainty after the warning that the Russians have given, that the Russians will be hunting them. And notice that it's come at one at the same time as a further categorical or categorical seeming statement from the White House that the question of sending U.S. troops to Ukraine is completely ruled out.

Yeah. I don't know how much we can trust those statements. No, but it may all suggest. It may all suggest that the administration is preparing Americans for the probability that American personnel are going to be killed in Ukraine over the next few weeks and months. So when the body backs start coming back, well, you could say these are just contractors. They were sent as contractors. We've formalized the fact they're not actual US military. And don't worry, we're not going to get drawn into a war with Russia.

because we're not sending troops there. Yeah, but isn't that how it always starts? Of course, it's exactly how it starts. That's exactly how it began in Vietnam. But, I mean, as I've been saying since the summer of 2022, the similarities are astonishing. They're getting greater every day. And again, Americans, for whom Vietnam would be a warning,

really ought to start noticing this and commenting about the fact that their government is doing exactly the same kind of things that the US government did way back in the 1960s, which ended in the debacle, which was Vietnam. A final question, do you get the sense that we're in a very strange place right now with regards to Project Ukraine and the conflict of Ukraine, and that we're definitely heading towards escalation. and most likely a war between Russia and the United States or Russia and NATO. I mean, that appears to be the trajectory of things. But on the opposite end, it seems like we could get some sort of an agreement out of the blue any day now. It feels like it in a way. And that, you know, given the dynamics of the election and everything that's going on in the United States, that maybe there are some forces in the U.S. that can somehow talk some sense to the Biden administration

to get to some sort of a starting point for negotiations. In other words, finally make a counteroffer to Putin's offer. I mean, we're definitely leaning more towards the trajectory of conflict. But every now and then you do hear some talk about diplomacy taking place, back channel communication taking place, phone calls between Austin and Belusuf taking place, and maybe there could be some sort of an off-ramp given the problems that the Biden campaign has, and to the anger in the United States in and around all of these conflicts that the U.S. is bogged down in. There are a lot of straws in the wind, which point in a more conciliatory direction.

action. Macron, I mean, I think one of the big shocks, if I could say so, were the European Parliament elections, when parties that opposed the war did well. And can I just say we've now got polling data, which has been coming out, it's been very thin the amount of polling data that's been provided, but about the reasons why people voted the way they did. But it's, it turns out that especially in Germany, people who voted for the, if you like, real opposition parties, the IFD and Sarajevojnex group, especially young people, one of the reasons that they said they voted, and it was very high on their list of concerns, was the war in Ukraine. So it's, it is having a crystallizing effect with the European public as well. Merck changed his position a bit.

That's exactly. That's the other thing. That's a sign of it. Suddenly, the CD, has begun to understand. Mertz, Friedrich Mertz, opposition leader in Germany, somebody who very much wants to be the next chancellor of Germany. The CDU is still not doing especially well, by the way. They're at 29%, 30% in the polls by historic standards. That's a very low level for the CDUs to be defined itself in. If he were to win an election with that kind of level of support, he would probably find himself obliged to enter into a very, very unhappy coalition with perhaps the SPD or the Greens or who knows who. So he's now seen how German opinion actually feels about the war, the trends in German opinion.

and so he's now indicated a shift. He's talking about negotiations, about the need to seek compromises, about some way out. He took a much more conciliatory line. This is in an interview he gave on Sunday than he has up to this time when he has, on the contrary,

being the arch, hawk, demanding, you know, the most extreme, escalation that they could possibly be. So clearly a shift for Mouths and the CDU reflecting change in Germany. There's also been a shift in France. Macroix is now saying that there's no prospect of French troops been sent to fight in Ukraine any time soon. He seems to be moderating his language also, and he's also talking about a negotiated settlement. And of course in Britain, there's now this, the election has been shaken up by Farage's comments talking about Western responsibility for provoking the

wall and he's just received support from a former British ambassador to Moscow, Tim Brenton, who's come out and written a strong piece of the telegraph, basically saying that Farage is right. So you could see that there is this current of opinion in Europe. and I suspect that there probably has always been this debate in the United States between the China Hawks, the Russia Hawks, between those who want a more realistic foreign policy, those who seek escalation. They're all there. The trouble is, I can't see a serious negotiation being undertaken by this foreign policy team

that the president, that Biden has appointed for himself. You look at Sullivan, if you look at Blinken, even more at Blinken, his feelings about Russia are so visceral that I don't really see him coming up with any kind of proposal that the Russians would ever be interested in working with. And, well, we've been hearing about this Trump peace plan, which was actually put together by General Kellogg, who is one of his chief advisors now. it's just basically another attempt to get the freeze going. The Russians have rejected it. The Ukrainians have rejected it. The Russians rejected this whole plan very emphatically over the last couple of days. I think before we see any real peace moves towards peace take shape,

we've still got to wait for events on the battlefronts to take us to the point where, you know, all of the sentiment for negotiations finally crystallizes and people understand in the West that there is an urgent need for negotiations and for concessions to the Russians at a level which up to now they've not been prepared to make. I think we're some way off from that. And to be honest, I don't see this happening before the election.

Right, okay. We will end the video there, the durand.com. We are in Rumble Odyssey, butch you telegram, rock fan, and Twitter X, and go to the Duran shop, pick up some football merch, use the code Football 24. The link is in the description box down below. Take care.